Backyard Wildlife

I'm always taking pictures of the flowers and fruits in my yard. It never ceases to amaze me the despite my somewhat black thumb, these things keep coming back just to cheer me up.

Late in the afternoon yesterday, I decided to try and get some ranunculus bulbs (or are they corms?) into pots before the rain started. That meant scrounging around the yard for some empty pots. Given the black thumb thing, it's not a big challenge.

But when I moved one likely candidate for a pot, I found that I'd disturbed one of our neighbors, this tiny little guy...And he's not exactly what you might expect from this photograph. This is just the only one that came out in focus. I was delighted to find him, knowing that amphibians are particularly sensitive to anything toxic in the water or soil. I take that to mean that while I may kill some of our plants, the yard is, on the whole quite healthy.

I felt a little guilty having ruined this little guy's home...and then bringing him inside for the whole family to see. It always makes me happy when the kids are interested in my weird little creatures. They even stopped watching whatever it was on the Discovery Channel to come meet this fella.

Unfortunately, I really did need to use the pot I'd found him under, so I let him go in the leaves around a different pot. Hopefully, that's good enough. Mam's supposed to take something that starts with 's' to school in a couple of weeks. Maybe I'll have to dig him or his friends up again...